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So I had an interesting situation come up in my game during the events under Parrot Island.
The party ended up fighting the huecuva before they'd found the silver dagger (they intentionally avoided the water), and really couldn't do much to hurt it. The cleric failed her turn attempt, and no one could do damage to the undead thing...
So the druid says 'Right, everybody drop your weapons and grapple!'. And proceeded to grapple with the huecuva successfully. Now, he was calling for people to dogpile on - my question is this: What do you do if they successfully pin something like this? Can they tie it up? They can't knock it out (undead immune to subdual). It ended up being a non-issue as the huecuva scored a successful slam (natural weapon) on the druid, making him realize that it was very dangerous to try and fight it weaponless - and only narrowly avoided getting killed by the deathtouch (low roll on the D6).
I'm not sure my first action when faced with a horrible dead thing would be to run up and hug it - seems a little odd. Thoughts?
Seems odd, but effective. It should buy them some time, at least. It would also reduce the huecuva's AC if it were pinned/tied up. Risky, but clever.
In a desperate situation, unless the threat in question obviously is anti-grapple/touchies (spiny, covered in viscous fluid, seeping gas from pores) pig piling on the bad guy is kind of a instinctually good idea. Strength in numbers, crush with weight, restrict hands, everything you want is there in the grapple.
But yeah, I would say a pinned creature can be tied up. It would take maybe twice as much time, because you're having to go around the pinner, but it would work.
But healing spells work too!
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While I agree it's sort of an effective plan, the player in question talked about his group doing this to a lich at one point.
It is an innovative solution, but I don't want it to be the player's 'go to' plan for any given situation. Of course, with the lich, all it'd take is a few paralyzing touches, and the party's in trouble. (I've also made a note for high level baddies to use stilled spells - or supernatural abilities).
I think the problem is that the players have been in other game systems for a long while, and aren't used to thinking 'D&D'. Still - this game session was really the cleric's chance to shine. Greater Turning From the Sun Domain dusted four of the zombies at once (14 points of turning damage + a 20 on the turn check), but when used against Veldimar, the player rolled badly on the turn check.
Anyhow. Any advice on how horrible undead things should react in this situation?
I know I read this a few months back. It may be on the heroics thread (or whatever the opposite for the obituaries is being called).
Anyway, I remember the story. There is a party out there that did exactly what your party did. No silver, can't damage it, so they grappled the hecueva.
The only thing they did that was different from your situation, was after it was held down and diseasing everyone, the party managed to pour several vials of holy water down it's throat, killing it.
It's stories like these that make me keep playing D&D. Anyone can slay a monster with a spell or sword, but the stories you remember are when the party takes a wild left turn and does something oddball.
My party (in the form of the half-orc scout) also grappled Krund. Admittedly it was made easier by the fact that the cleric had rebuked him first! The rest of the PCs were busy with 5 pirate zombies (very, VERY busy, to the point where one PC went down to -9 hp no less than three times), so rather than mess around and risk the duration of the rebuke expiring, the half-orc tied up Krund, threw him in the water off the ruined jetty, piled rocks on top of him and left him there. Tied up (Use Rope check of 23!) and pinned down, and only having a strength of 10, I'm not sure he'll ever be able to escape. I'm torn between simply having him stuck there for all eternity (because it was pretty cool, and the player deserves to not have his achievement lightly discarded), or having him somehow escape to complicate the PCs lives as they try to find an exit to the tunnels...
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Amazing. My players did the exact same thing. They went into Parrot Island last week and ended up grappling Krund. He was trying to gradually retreat, because there wasn't anything for him to do. Then it was surrounded because of some good tumbles, and they dog piled him when it became clear that they weren't going to be able to take him down. He kept missing his attacks, so he didn't seem like much of a threat to them. The rogue entangled it with a rope first, then the ranger grappled and took it down to the ground, where they tied it up.
So, flabbergasted at the mass grapple and what to do I let them go ahead with it, and once they had it tied up they cut off its head.
Shrug. It was anti-climatic so I decided that cutting off Krund's head isn't sufficient for this kind of undead and resolved to have him return to wander the chambers beneath Parrot Island to challenge the party again if they come back for all the copper and silver they couldn't swim with.
It made me think that undead should be like webbles. They fall down and the party can claim victory and the experience points, but they don't stay down unless you do the specific things that kind of undead require to be completely destroyed. It makes undead more creepy without making them more of a challenge during play.
I'd think this would usually not be the greatest of options with undead. A lot of them have nasty touch attacks that drain levels and such. Playing touchy feely with them just strikes me as usually a bad idea compared to other options (like blast them to a thousand pieces using powerful cleric spells).
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Shrug. It was anti-climatic so I decided that cutting off Krund's head isn't sufficient for this kind of undead and resolved to have him return to wander the chambers beneath Parrot Island to challenge the party again if they come back for all the copper and silver they couldn't swim with.
It made me think that undead should be like webbles. They fall down and the party can claim victory and the experience points, but they don't stay down unless you do the specific things that kind of undead require to be completely destroyed. It makes undead more creepy without making them more of a challenge during play.
If you're going to do something like this, it's only fair to allow your player characters a Knowledge(Religion) roll to be aware of this information. I would imagine that any character whose done even a small bit of research on battling the undead would have learned about this 'house rule' from somewhere.
Wow, Krund sure was a hassle for most of us here! LOL
Our group also got creative... as the Fighter went toe to undead toe with Krund, our ranger (a crazy elf with no social skills) tied a rope around him (very difficult but successful!) and used that as a ranged trip attempt. This gave the cleric enough time to bless the fighter's carbine (using firearm rules from an older Dragon magazine). Krund went down in a hail of holy bullets after that!